


I Know That I Love You, But I'm Still Learning (To Love Myself)

by Mia_writes



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Family Dynamics, Gen, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mental Health Issues, POV Richard Gansey III, Pre-Canon, References to Depression, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:27:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29956821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_writes/pseuds/Mia_writes
Summary: When Gansey was growing up, love was uncomplicated. Love was clean and precise and just the like the smiles on all the Gansey faces: it was impossible to tell if it went deeper than the surface.The Gansey kind of love would not have landed Gansey where he is now, in a hospital waiting room, sitting next to a bloody Noah and clutching his phone tightly in one hand.***A story of the night Ronan ended up in the hospital, told from Gansey's perspective. And also an exploration of Gansey's relationship with love, depression, and his need to appear fine from the outside.
Relationships: Helen Gansey & Richard Gansey III, Noah Czerny & Richard Gansey III, Noah Czerny & Ronan Lynch, Richard Gansey III & Ronan Lynch
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	I Know That I Love You, But I'm Still Learning (To Love Myself)

**Author's Note:**

> This fic basically sprang out of the idea that Ronan and Gansey have similar-ish mental health issues that they deal with in very different ways. I wanted to explore the ways in which Gansey's upbringing shaped the person he is in canon (or slightly before it)
> 
> Title from Still Learning by Halsey, which is a very Gansey song in my opinion
> 
> Warnings: this fic centers around the night Ronan ended up in the hospital due to his dream suicide attempt. There is no description of the suicide attempt itself, but there is a lot of discussion around it. Please be careful when reading
> 
> Hope you enjoy :)

Gansey knows his parents would not believe it if they could see him now.

He was raised a certain kind of way, with a certain kind of beliefs. In the Gansey world, you dealt with your problems quietly, alone, with a smile on your face. You didn’t cry where the tears would stain, didn’t bleed where the blood would reveal weakness. You didn’t scream where they could hear you.

You died quietly in a forest and didn’t speak of the hornets or the terror or the way you couldn’t go outside for three months after that without having a panic attack. You didn’t talk about the fact that you’d heard a voice in your head and were now on a mission to find a dead Welsh king, because that would make you crazy. And being mentally ill just wasn’t good for the campaign, now was it?

When Gansey was growing up, love was a reward. A goodnight kiss when he successfully read the whole picture book under his mom’s watchful eye. A pat on the back from his father when his T-ball team won thanks to Gansey’s home run. A smile from his mother when he charmed her coworkers or an approving tilt of his father’s head when he brought home straight A’s on his report card.

Love was uncomplicated. Love was clean and precise and just the like the smiles on all the Gansey faces: it was impossible to tell if it went deeper than the surface.

The Gansey kind of love would not have landed Gansey where he is now, in a hospital waiting room, sitting next to a bloody Noah and clutching his phone tightly in one hand. Adam should be here by now. He isn’t, which means that tomorrow there will be a new purple mark on his face that Gansey won’t be allowed to express concern about.

It isn’t that Gansey doesn’t understand why Adam is built the way he is — hard determination and stubborn anger and sharp edges. It’s that Gansey is tired of approaching Adam with good intentions, only to be betrayed by his untamable tongue. It’s that Gansey is tired of opening his ribs so that Adam can see the soft parts of his heart only to have Adam use the knowledge like a scientist, finding the most efficient way to make a cut.

Still, the guilt pools in Gansey’s stomach as his fingers tense around the phone. He doesn’t dare call again. He knows the damage he’s already wrought.

Noah, sitting beside Gansey, is pale under the blood. The red is splashed on his t-shirt, staining his hands like Lady Macbeth, crawling up his arms. He tried to hold Ronan’s life inside his body with his own hands. As if he were a god instead of merely a human boy.

But at least he did something. Noah is the one who discovered Ronan was missing. Noah is the one who found his body and who held him so at least Ronan wouldn’t be alone if he died. He’s the one who held Ronan’s shredded skin together long enough for the paramedics to arrive.

Even Adam has paid, in a horrible way.

What has Gansey done? What has Gansey ever done?

He thinks of countless nights, prying bottles out of Ronan’s hand. Holding his limp body up over the toilet as Ronan snarked, “Thanks Dick, I needed someone to hold my hair.” Hiding the keys to Ronan’s BMW because he was afraid Ronan would drive off and never come back. Pouring Ronan into his Aglionby uniform and making him sit through at least half of his classes. Waking up from his hard-earned sleep to the music coming from Ronan’s room, at decibels that shook the walls. Finding a drunk Ronan passed out over the flattened cardboard of his mini Henrietta, drooling over the paint.

Nothing he has ever done has fixed Ronan. Not cajoling him or threatening him or supporting him or forgiving him. Aside from at the basic survival level where Ronan needs someone to make sure he doesn’t climb drunk into the driver’s seat, Ronan doesn’t need Gansey. He’s never needed Gansey.

And Gansey understands why.

He wasn’t built for this. The kind of love he was taught… it didn’t prepare him for this. It didn’t prepare him for loving a human wildfire, untamable and dangerous.

He had thought, growing up, that the shallow kind of love his parents showed him hurt. But it that had been paper-cut pain, skin deep. He hadn’t known how much more this kind of love could hurt, how it could feel like a fatal wound.

Gansey isn’t sure he can survive this.

He bows his head, pressing the backs of his knuckles to his forehead. He feels Noah’s hand between his shoulder blades, like he’s somehow guessed how close Gansey is to breaking down. There is no warmth in Noah’s touch. All Gansey can think is that he now has a bloody handprint on his back and he’ll never be able to wear this shirt again without thinking about death.

His head is already bowed, so Gansey prays. He’s not religious in the way that Ronan is. He was raised in a good Protestant family and they went to church on the holidays. There was a period of time in Gansey’s childhood where it was important for his dad to be seen at church every week in order to make a good impression on the community. They woke up every Sunday and put on nice clothes and sat right in the second row. After church, they lingered in the courtyard so that Richard Campbell Gansey II could shake hands with important people. Gansey used that time to befriend a girl called Leah. She had known Gansey better than all the kids at school, and Gansey had enjoyed the late mornings spent in the church courtyard with her. He’d felt like a real child, playing with a friend who expected nothing from him but an hour of his time once a week. That kind of make-believe didn’t hurt. After some time, his father didn’t need to be network at church anymore. They never went back.

Gansey wouldn’t say he’s religious, even though he does believe in a higher power. Gansey came back from the dead; it would be a little hypocritical of him to think Jesus couldn’t do the same. He doesn’t usually pray when he wants something, or make a detailed plan the way Adam does. Mostly Gansey charms his problems, or throws money at them. A product of his upbringing.

But Ronan. Ronan would want to be prayed over. Ronan, who has lost so much in so little time, has never lost his faith. And perhaps he would like the idea of someone speaking to God on his behalf.

So Gansey prays. He prays wordlessly, instead showing God all the reasons Ronan shouldn’t die. All the memories Gansey holds dearest. Curly-haired Ronan, soft and still so brave, balancing on a skateboard and cajoling Gansey into trouble. Ronan cursing like poetry as he helps Gansey drag a washing machine into the bathroom/kitchen/laundry room. A sullen, tattooed Ronan squishing a bee between his bare palms because it dared to get too close to Gansey. Ronan in a disheveled Aglionby uniform, claiming that pickles are disgusting before shoving his food at Adam. Ronan and Noah, covered in scrapes from the parking lot outside Monmouth, laughing as brightly as all teenage boys should.

Ronan needs to live. Ronan _deserves_ to live.

“Do you think he’s alright?” Gansey asks Noah. He straightens so that Noah’s hand falls from his back, so that he can see Noah’s face.

“He’s alive,” Noah says, no doubt in his tone. Gansey decides not to question his surety.

“Are _you_ alright?” he asks instead.

Noah stares at him, uncomprehending, for a long moment. He raises one hand to his cheekbone, leaving a smear of blood behind. “At least if he’d died, we would’ve remembered him. His friends, his siblings… we would’ve cared.”

It’s horribly morbid, but Gansey supposes Noah’s entitled. He is the one who found Ronan’s body after all. Gansey wonders if, for a moment, Noah thought he was already dead.

It’s another hour or two before he gets to see Ronan. It should’ve been more.; the nurse tried to tell Gansey he had to wait until morning visiting hours, but he slipped a few hundred dollars into her hand and she let him into Ronan’s room. Noah tells Gansey he’s going to wash the blood off so he doesn’t scare Ronan and that he’ll catch up, so Gansey takes a deep breath and enters the room alone.

Ronan looks washed out against the sheets, his skin wan and pale from lack of blood. His lips are white, almost the color of the bandages around both of his wrists and the bedsheets he’s lying in. His dark eyelashes and the tattoo peaking over his shoulder are the only signs he’s not an uncolored painting.

A ghost.

Ronan’s eyes open sluggishly as Gansey comes in. They’re more focused than Gansey had thought they would be. He’d imagined that Ronan would be eager for the escapism provided by the hospital painkillers, but his gaze is steady, sharp at the edges like he’s in pain — which is to say it’s the same gaze Ronan always has.

“Dick,” he rolls over his tongue. He’s trying to sound insolent, but Gansey hears the surprise underneath.

“Ronan,” he says in relief. He wants to cry or ask Ronan why he did it or beg him to make promises Gansey isn’t sure he’d keep.

“Thought you’d have fucked off by now,” Ronan says.

It has never even occurred to Gansey to be anywhere but here. “What?”

Ronan sneers. “You’re too good to hanging around a fuck-up like me.”

Gansey shakes his head. “I’m not better than you Ronan. I’m just… less sad.”

He should know better than to name the beast Ronan has been facing. Ronan gets vicious when he feels seen, and this time is no exception.

He meets Gansey’s gaze evenly and says with devastating simplicity “Are you?”

Like he understands that for Gansey, sadness doesn’t look like street races and beer bottles and broken stereos. Ronan’s way of breaking down is too obvious, loud like the noises the Pig makes right before it stops in the middle of the road. Gansey can’t let the world see his malfunctioning parts. For Gansey, sadness is sleepless nights and practiced smiles and joining the crew team so he has a reason to get up in the mornings.

Knowing that Ronan sees… it’s like dying. Not the death of a dozen bee stings but a bullet, quick and efficient, dead before he has time to react.

Ronan sees the blow land and his eyes lose some of their frost. It’s not an apology, but Gansey knows he won’t get one. Ronan tells the truth, whether it hurts or not.

“Ronan,” Gansey tries again, getting closer to the bed and Ronan’s prostrate body. “Ronan, I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware that things were this bad. I should’ve… I didn’t do right by you.”

Because that’s the crux of it, isn’t it? Ronan runs on love. He’s been using familial love for most of his life — the proud affection he received from his father, the unconditional support he received from his mother, the sweet adoration he received from Matthew — and now he doesn’t know how to stand on his own. Gansey loves Ronan harder than he has ever loved anyone, but he isn’t enough. He didn’t know unconditional love before he met Ronan, and he struggles to understand how Ronan, who does everything he can to push everyone away, is the person Gansey’s heart chose to tie itself to. Loving Ronan is an extreme sport. It’s skydiving with a faulty parachute. It’s going cliff diving and needing to be unconcerned about the fact that you might get bettered against the rocks.

Gansey has no training in this field, and he keeps getting himself hurt. But he can’t stop loving Ronan, even when it tears him apart. Ronan is the brother he’s never had, the best friend he never had a chance to make before moving away from his parents and their expectations. And Ronan loves Gansey without any strings attached, in a way Gansey has never experienced. He would not be able to fathom it, if it were not for the way he loves Ronan.

Ronan sneers. “What were you supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” Gansey admits. He’s sure that _chin up, you’ll be fine_ is not the correct answer, but that doesn’t mean that he’s found the right one.

“I’m not your problem, Gansey,” Ronan says.

“But you’re my friend.” That means Ronan is Gansey’s problem, because Gansey knows that after this night, it won’t be only dreams of a child being stung in a forest that keep him awake. How is he ever meant to sleep again when Ronan could be dying in the next room over or a few streets away?

“It’s not the same thing,” Ronan says.

Gansey knows he shouldn’t say this, but he can’t bite it back. “Promise me that you won’t do this again. Please. I need you to be alive, Ronan.”

Ronan’s eyes dart away, looking strangely guilty. “I can’t promise that.”

Gansey’s heart drops, like a cartoon character that’s just walked off a cliff. “If you’re feeling this way, like you might do something about it, we can get you help. A therapist or medication or-“

“Stop sounding like Declan,” Ronan snarls.

Gansey takes a breath. He gets compared to Declan more often than he would like, and it hurts every time. He doesn’t want Ronan to feel controlled, but he also doesn’t trust Ronan to control his own life. Especially after tonight.

“You can talk to me,” he says. “If you’re thinking of doing something permanent, you can come and get me. We don’t even have to talk. I can just stay with you. Just please, Ronan. Please promise me that I won’t have to wake up to find you dead.”

Ronan doesn’t lie, so if he promises, Gansey will believe him.

Ronan glances down at the clean white bandages on his wrists. “Everybody dies someday, Gansey. I can’t promise never to die. I’m not Glendower.”

Which is Ronan purposefully misunderstanding Gansey’s request. Which is Ronan saying that he can’t promise not to hurt himself.

Gansey holds back tears. He has practice in this deception, so he’s able to smile and lean over the bed to hug Ronan. He imagines what his mother or father would say if they were here: “Don’t do this again” or “How could you be so selfish?” Or “that wasn’t very smart of you. You have so much to live for.”

“I love you,” Gansey says, in the way he was taught men should never say to other men. He says it because it’s true, and if Ronan needs reason to stay alive then Gansey will tear apart every social rule and every part of himself to give him that.

He’s already walking away when Ronan says, “Gansey.”

He turns back. Ronan looks cracked open and vulnerable. “I love you too,” he says.

Gansey’s eyelashes are wet. He nods once, a lump in his throat. Suddenly, Ronan’s expression lights up.

“Noah, man!”

Gansey turns. Noah is standing in the doorway, smudgy and sad but free of blood. He dredges up a smile from somewhere, trying to match Ronan’s mood.

“You asshole,” Noah says, perhaps because that’s what Ronan would say if he’d had to find one of his friends bleeding out in a church pew.

Noah was right, earlier. They all have pieces of Ronan inside of them. Gansey hasn’t known Ronan for very long, but if he was to lose him… he’d never get over that.

He nods a goodbye at Ronan and steps out of the room to let Ronan speak to Noah and to call Declan. He’s relieved that he gets to make the “he’s alright” phone call instead of the one he thought he would have to make earlier tonight.

“Dying’s not all it’s cracked up to be.” Noah’s voice drifts into the hallway from Ronan’s hospital room.

Ronan snorts. “What would you know about it?”

There’s a beat and then, “Every idea you have is a bad idea. This one isn’t any different.”

Ronan laughs and Gansey has to close his eyes. He presses his head back against the wall. He almost wonders how Ronan can laugh like that only hours after trying to take his own life. But he knows.

He remembers being ten years old and running into Helen in the kitchen. He had snuck down to get some milk, hoping it would help him sleep and keep the swirling thoughts at bay. Helen had been sneaking in through the window, fifteen and wearing far too much makeup around her eyes. The black had run down her cheeks, and Gansey didn’t know much about makeup but he thought it meant she’d been crying.

“Don’t tell mom and dad,” Helen had said by way of hello.

Gansey had nodded, and something in his face had pulled the edges of Helen’s features down.

“Are you okay?” she’d asked.

Gansey had smiled. “Of course. Just wanted milk.” When Helen continued to look skeptical he had asked, “Are you okay?”

Helen’s lips had turned up at the corners. “Of course. We’re always okay, aren’t we?”

She’d sat beside him, pouring herself a glass of milk, and the two of them had drunk side by side in silence before returning to their separate bedrooms. The next morning, Helen had laughed brightly at one of mom’s coworkers that had been invited over for brunch and Gansey had almost forgetten the devastation he’d seen on her face the night before.

In a way, he admires Ronan for wearing his pain on the outside. It takes a bravery Gansey isn’t capable of.

He presses the number saved fifth on his speed-dial. Declan picks up after only three rings, sounding wide-awake despite it being almost four in the morning.

“What has Ronan done?” he demands. “What’s wrong? Is he hurt?”

Gansey pulls the phone away from his ear at the raw worry in Declan’s voice. He takes a shaky breath, then presses the phone back against his cheek.

“Don’t worry,” he says in a soothing voice he learned from his parents. No traces of the worry and fear that won’t unglue from the inside of his throat and that he's sure he’ll be tasting for years. It's time to put his insides back where they belong and be Richard Campbell Gansey III, polite and powerful and unafraid.

Gansey pastes on a smile, hoping Declan can hear it in his voice. “Ronan is okay. I mean, it’s been an awful night and you should come to the hospital, but you don’t have to worry about him. I’ve got him.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Kudos and comments are always appreciated


End file.
